What should Christian apologists say?

[katerinah1947]

Pretty sure scientists don't use the scientific method to test things that are purportedly transcendental in nature: everything has to be immanent in science or the evidence is specious at best. You're invoking special pleading and goalpost shifting at every turn here and expecting people to just not catch it in the verbiage you spew.

Basic process is hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. You analyze the results of the experiment, which is founded on a hypothesis that uses a singular control (which you aren't doing when you invoke multiple factors, but are trying to generate a new paradigm or model entirely). Your notion of evidence is the most questionable thing here because it's making correlations of particular "experiments" you do and concluding that must be a causative link, when that doesn't follow by necessity. The entity you posit is, I imagine, still outside of space and time, so any attempts to study it are fruitless, because there's no way to verify it exists in a way that could directly connect to it and not some other incomprehensible magical concept.

I never said I was a scientist, but I'm not someone swayed by pretentious pedagogues who want to tell everything what to think instead of how to think in a critical and rational manner, neither of which you're doing except to rationalize your cognitive dissonance.

Hi,

Do you Want to learn how to think like a scientist does??????

LOVE,

 

[katerinah1947]

Generalizations based on little more than an excuse not to investigate further: what a surprise. Atheists are more complicated than the petty strawman you've created of them from one or two limited experiences.

Hi,

Again. Do you Want to learn how to think like a scientist does????

LOVE,

 

[muichimotsu]

And you're the be all and end all of scientists? Don't make me laugh

 

[muichimotsu]

You are wrong in your "pretty sure" starrnent. You are wrong.

LOVE,

So what other transcendent things besides "God" do scientists investigate, pray tell? Or is God the only one? in which case, you're just reinforcing the argument that this whole "science-->God" nonsense is special pleading and logically fallacious and impotent.

 

[katerinah1947]

And you're the be all and end all of scientists? Don't make me laugh

Hi,

I am a cookie-cutter scientist. I am a standard scientist. I work just like all the other scientists work.

I conform to requirements.

Which requirements?

The requirements of those in that profession.

And you are starting to show the symptoms of Narcissism in your responses, or anti-social behavior.

I do hope you are not a Narcissist, or the other one.

LOVE,

 

[katerinah1947]

So what other transcendent things besides "God" do scientists investigate, pray tell? Or is God the only one? in which case, you're just reinforcing the argument that this whole "science-->God" nonsense is special pleading and logically fallacious and impotent.

Hi,

Go gack and do the work that was described to you.

LOVE,

 

[katerinah1947]

So what other transcendent things besides "God" do scientists investigate, pray tell? Or is God the only one? in which case, you're just reinforcing the argument that this whole "science-->God" nonsense is special pleading and logically fallacious and impotent.

Hi,

If you are confused, and don't know how to do the work, ask for help.

Until, you do that work the way it was done, you will not know whether that work was correct or not.

Scientists say ridiculous things all the time, that are true.

Most people respond to science the same way. They respond with anger, fear and a certainty that the science is wrong.

Those that do test, by doing that work over, find out whether or not the scientist was right or not.

Those that just test the results, also can find out if the Nutty Professor type was correct or not.

Even scientists do that with the work of other scientists, that they don't understand or disagree with.

Do the work. Don't do the work. Choose.

LOVE,

 

[cloudyday2]

What strikes me is that the majority of the points were not syllogistic arguments at all. For example, "Good Literature and Reasonable Writing." So when you say, "I don't agree with that reasoning," I am left wondering whether you have experienced good (Christian) literature and reasonable writing and have found it unpersuasive, or whether you simply haven't experienced such literature and reasonable writing. Since good literature and reasonable writing are persuasive by definition, I assume it's the latter.

Lewis' quote from Surprised by Joy is instructive:

"In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for… A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading."​

So is Edward Feser's:

"When I was an undergrad I came across the saying that learning a little philosophy leads you away from God, but learning a lot of philosophy leads you back. As a young man who had learned a little philosophy, I scoffed. But in later years and at least in my own case, I would come to see that it’s true."​

What is the commonality? God is found when one's guard is let down. When one is receptive and open they are susceptible to truth, to God. Encounter with God and conversion are almost always unexpected, and this is part of the reason why. One cannot be influenced unless they open themselves up to something, and the atheist will only open themselves up as they mature, and often only when they believe it to be safe, when they believe it to be free of God's hand.

This is why apologetics, especially in a place like CF, is generally so unsuccessful. The atheists coming here are often immature, they are often looking for a fight. They are in a combative mindset and often in an offensive stance. They have some chip on their shoulder that involves religion, and their primary aim is not openness to truth but rather combat with the religious. Or, at the very least, theirs is a "Convince me!" mindset rather than a neutral, vulnerable search for truth. Inevitably the Christians respond in kind, adopting a posture that is similarly unfocused on truth as primary, and open inquirers are liable to meet a hostile environment on either side of the fence. CF is better than many forums, but the basic model holds here as well.

For these reasons I think limiting oneself to syllogistic arguments in an apologetic environment ignores the most fertile soil of conversion.

Thanks, @zippy2006 . I have always admired St. Thomas for his insistence on seeing the risen Jesus for himself. That is probably the fundamental reason why those eight reasons did not resonate with me. Proving the existence of a God that only interacts with other people is pointless from my perspective. Ironically, I have seen some interesting things that make me wonder if some kind of spiritual beings exist, but I have also been told by a therapist that the things I saw were only hallucinations.

 

[muichimotsu]

Hi,

I am a cookie-cutter scientist. I am a standard scientist. I work just like all the other scientists work.

I conform to requirements.

Which requirements?

The requirements of those in that profession.

And you are starting to show the symptoms of Narcissism in your responses, or anti-social behavior.

I do hope you are not a Narcissist, or the other one.

LOVE,

Clearly you don't work like them all, because I'm almost certain over 50% or so don't believe in God in the scientific profession by some accounts

And when did you suddenly get to be a psychologist all of a sudden? Pray tell, what points on the DSM V do I meet for NPD? Or APD, which I find even less likely than NPD?

 

[muichimotsu]

Hi,

If you are confused, and don't know how to do the work, ask for help.

Until, you do that work the way it was done, you will not know whether that work was correct or not.

Scientists say ridiculous things all the time, that are true.

Most people respond to science the same way. They respond with anger, fear and a certainty that the science is wrong.

Those that do test, by doing that work over, find out whether or not the scientist was right or not.

Those that just test the results, also can find out if the Nutty Professor type was correct or not.

Even scientists do that with the work of other scientists, that they don't understand or disagree with.

Do the work. Don't do the work. Choose.

LOVE,

All I see is a confirmation bias structure with regards to your "pray and wait" experiments

 

[katerinah1947]

Clearly you don't work like them all, because I'm almost certain over 50% or so don't believe in God in the scientific profession by some accounts

And when did you suddenly get to be a psychologist all of a sudden? Pray tell, what points on the DSM V do I meet for NPD? Or APD, which I find even less likely than NPD?

Hi,

An argumentative and insulting style while simultaneously ignoring all things which would lead you to a answer based on the facts, so that your desired goal to seem superior is not defeated within your own mind.

That is just one clue.

Do you need to know how many Narcissists that I have successfully diagnosed? Do you need to know the two anti-socials or the Borderline I have worked with?

Now. Are you still wanting to oppose the work presented, by not addressing the work, or will you please let this thread diverge from you back to Apologetics.

How this must upset you, that some cookie-cutter science techniques can actually result in finding God, to a scientist.

Thomas Aquinas proved God is real through Philosophy, I am told.

Father Federico Pinto has also worked through Thomas Aquinas's proof, and has successfully done that same proof.

The point being, that to find God, many techniques work, but they are specific to the person finding God.

I am a scientist, both of those are Philosopher types, so is my friend Anna, and what happened to me through science, happened to them through Philosophy.,

Each of us has done the work, each of us knows God is Real.

Depending upon what you understand, that is the method you can use to try and find God.

You seem to use insults and put downs, as your main method of communicating.

You have bumped into a scientist though, who is both a scientist and who Knows, not Believes, but knows God is Real.

Scientists when working, displace their emotions and feelings, while working.

So, when you start making comments of an emotional or insulting content, to try and communicate, the logical part of me does not hear that, as that part is only looking for content.

When, you say something that is true, is not true, the logic in me asks why? When you avoid the issues and launch into insults, the logic in me asks why?

Scientists, normally drop their emotions when working to be fully logical, so that they do not influence the results with any internal biases.

You don't do that. I watch.

Gravity, is a well known science item. Your and my conversation could be over that, if you did not know that Gravity is real. And it would be the same.

You have said or implied that you don't agree with that.

Gravity can only be verified by you by doing the work.

However, how much Gravity is here, and what it's related to, takes more.

So does God. Gravity as measured on the surface of the earth, is a force, and it causes all objects to accelerate, as all forces do.

The rate of that is 32 feet per second squared, or 9.8 meters per second squared.

If you have never ever measured Gravity, and I told you that I have, and I know it's value.

You might balk at that similarly. I then would tell you how to measure Gravity, and similarly you might balk at that.

I do know how to measure Gravity also. If you do not, no amount of my telling you how will work for you, until you do the work for yourself.

I fly Cessnas. I can hover a helicopter. Both of those also are learned by doing., And I can teach anyone how to do both of those also.

In all of those things. Gravity, flying a plane, hovering a heicopter, you can't really know, until you learn, and learning, with those, only comes by repeating the same steps, everyone else has, who has learned that.

That Bible work, done scientifically, can be done by you that way. No other.

Do you know in a Cessna, how long it would take you to crash, if you flew into a cloud without practicing? Do you know if you could fly a plane without being shown? Helicopters are even harder than planes.

Each, including math, and language and science are learned by doing, doing what those before you have done.

You are objecting to learning by doing what everyone else does.

Do you realize that? Or are you merely not realizing that?

LOVE,

 

[muichimotsu]

When you make posturing to appear scientific, that's hardly honest. Just saying you experiment and using a nominal idea of it is not experimentation, even in the less hard sciences like psychology, since I seriously doubt this process has been peer reviewed, since you've failed to answer people's requests for that, suggesting you're an anomaly and likely feel persecuted, a martyr in your community.

When you claim to know God instead of believing in it, you create a sense of arrogance that you apparently project onto me in claiming I'm narcissistic based on a trait that you don't even try to relate directly to the DSM, but your own notion of what constitutes such diagnosis. Your patients aren't notches on your belt, they're people, treat them as such instead of mere stepping stones.

I'm not contesting that experience and practice can lead to learning, but you can't make an absolutist statement as if your personal experience of what you call "God" is demonstrably so to everyone. Did it even remotely occur to you that some people find no compelling reason to invoke God to begin with? Or are they just "deluding" themselves or other psychobabble you want to throw out to fit into your own notions of grandeur that God can simultaneously be something wondrous and yet reducible to scientific processes.

 

[katerinah1947]

When you make posturing to appear scientific, that's hardly honest. Just saying you experiment and using a nominal idea of it is not experimentation, even in the less hard sciences like psychology, since I seriously doubt this process has been peer reviewed, since you've failed to answer people's requests for that, suggesting you're an anomaly and likely feel persecuted, a martyr in your community.

When you claim to know God instead of believing in it, you create a sense of arrogance that you apparently project onto me in claiming I'm narcissistic based on a trait that you don't even try to relate directly to the DSM, but your own notion of what constitutes such diagnosis. Your patients aren't notches on your belt, they're people, treat them as such instead of mere stepping stones.

I'm not contesting that experience and practice can lead to learning, but you can't make an absolutist statement as if your personal experience of what you call "God" is demonstrably so to everyone. Did it even remotely occur to you that some people find no compelling reason to invoke God to begin with? Or are they just "deluding" themselves or other psychobabble you want to throw out to fit into your own notions of grandeur that God can simultaneously be something wondrous and yet reducible to scientific processes.

Hi,

Again, you are talking nonsensically. I am not emotional and that entire response was emotional.

If I talk objectively, and you talk emotionally, when you respond, I see no content.

If I look at the emotional content, called child, in the parent/adult/child, or caretaking/working/feeling way of looking at things that a friend of mine George Debi** uses in therapy, and teaches, then it looks like I am upsetting you greatly.

Going back to the non emotional mode, and not using George's ideas, why are you so resistant, to the idea, that a set of controlled experiments resulted in finding out that The Bible is Real?

It seems to bother you a lot? I don't understand. Why does this bother you?

LOVE,

 

[muichimotsu]

Because it undermines the notion of the Bible being something spiritual and thus not something you can reduce to a stratified and rigorous test, because the god described doesn't have any rules besides its own will, because it's supreme above everything else.

 

[katerinah1947]

Because it undermines the notion of the Bible being something spiritual and thus not something you can reduce to a stratified and rigorous test, because the god described doesn't have any rules besides its own will, because it's supreme above everything else.

Hi,

In the doing, The Will of God was there.

Later, I found out that God cannot be tested, above or beyond His Will.

I never reduced God. That working was allowed.

The process you were being asked to go through, would have revealed all that to you.

Now, you are probably prohibited from doing that work.

What you would have found by doing that work, is eventually God would be giving you help.

Think about this: I DID NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT BOOK.

If I do not insult God, because I Actually have no idea what I am doing, then no intentional sacrilege is possible.,

And, research wise, emotions are not there.

Some, dumb (does not understand yet) researcher, starts looking at a book objectively. She has no idea whether it is real or not. She has no idea if God is real or not.,

Not until she gets to the controlled experiments, does God reveal Himself in any way.

She has to force herself to do the other four experiments, still keeping her emotions gone, because the first experiment had so much super natural in it, she could have quit there, if that was allowed in science.

It is not. Each one has to be done, in case there is an alternate finding. A conflict.

All she knew after that was the Bible is Real. For you, it is what it says it is. It is what it is told to us it is by religious others.

She did not expect the next part, and started questioning her sanity. Soon though she did not. That too was in that book. It is under certain conditions, God says in there, that He will reveal Himself to a person.

I never expected this. I have done nothing to reduce God, to control God. NOTHING.

He, allowed that work.

LOVE,

 

[muichimotsu]

Ah, so the God is omnipotent, but not entirely thing? That's a classic chestnut of an argument. And not really convincing because all it does is make human effort seem important when the opposite seems to be true: God calls and humans answer. By your notion, it seems like humans can just pursue God in some Pascalian notion of going through the motions and just playing at prayer and piety and it'll just eventually click.

Coming from the guy who put forward the ridiculous application of game theory to the idea of whether belief in God had a net gain, it's hard to take your suggestions seriously because they depend on a predictability that shouldn't exist with a deity that's all knowing to an extent that nothing should be a surprise to it in the slightest.

 

[katerinah1947]

Ah, so the God is omnipotent, but not entirely thing? That's a classic chestnut of an argument. And not really convincing because all it does is make human effort seem important when the opposite seems to be true: God calls and humans answer. By your notion, it seems like humans can just pursue God in some Pascalian notion of going through the motions and just playing at prayer and piety and it'll just eventually click.

Coming from the guy who put forward the ridiculous application of game theory to the idea of whether belief in God had a net gain, it's hard to take your suggestions seriously because they depend on a predictability that shouldn't exist with a deity that's all knowing to an extent that nothing should be a surprise to it in the slightest.

Hi,

You are still making zero sense above.

Is that your intention?

Do you not want to be understood?

That's it isn't it?

You do not want to be understood.

LOVE,

 

[Chris B]

Unless we hypothesize that each religion is based on an incomplete understanding of God.

As a hypothesis (one amongst others) I'd say that's fine.
When anyone says they know which bits to edit so as to produce a harmonious (and therefore true?) understanding, that's when I raise at least one eyebrow.
Procrustes, your hour has come.

 

[Chris B]

Hi,

...we, who do know God exists, know you are being called, by God, to find Him.

Well, you think you know that.
What is thought to be known, and what is actually known, they need not be in accord.
I doubt the epistemology that arrives at "a certain knowledge of God" while being familiar with both the sensation and the belief.

It seems God interfaces with each person the way they actually are, and not the way anyone else is.

In which case it would appear that God, if existing, wants me to be an atheist.
One of the "vessels of wrath, made for destruction"? Oh well. Now't to be done about that, if true.

 

[katerinah1947]

Hi,

Well, you think you know that.

What I and others like me know about God, is beyond your word, 'think' as in 'think you know that'

I imagine the reason for that, is I and others have had some amount of Direct Contact with God, The God, and for real.

In my case, who has the paperwork and test conditions protecting me from any charges, that is unusual sounding, but historically others have been in similar situations to mine, that we are not going to talk about.

What is thought to be known, and what is actually known, they need not be in accord.

However, what is known and what is thought to be known, make sense to me, in why there is items which are thought to be true, and are in fact not true. (Memory aide for later, in code. M71516ttw, & THS, if needed.)

I doubt the epistemology that arrives at "a certain knowledge of God" while being familiar with both the sensation and the belief.

Hi again,
If you mean, that you don't think that God as experienced, is in any way related to anything any if the Spiritual and Religious people have said, that would be incorrect.

There is an amazing set of thoughts about God, which only lack a few things, to be more correct. And as mentioned, there is lots that is incorrect done by those folks who do that semi purposefully, but think they are doing that on purpose, for their personal goals.

In which case it would appear that God, if existing, wants me to be an atheist.

Actually. No.

One of the "vessels of wrath, made for destruction"?

????? If you know that, then you Know God, and knowing God, removes your possible use of the word atheism from you.

Oh well.

This cite, CF, is full of people who can show you how that is not true. (What you are saying)

Now't to be done about that, if true.

It is probably not true.

LOVE,